The Science of Soft Carpet

What is carpet? A soft floor covering, right? But, how soft is soft? And what makes some carpets softer than others? To fully explain what makes some carpets softer than others, we have to get a little scientific, but don’t worry, we’ll keep it basic.

FIBERS AND FILAMENTS

To explain why some carpets are softer than others, we need to take a closer look at the fiber. Each fiber is made of tiny filaments bundled together. The fibers are then bundled together to make your carpet. The finer the filaments, the softer the carpet. Denier is a unit of measure for filament size. Let’s do a quick comparison to help explain this:

The range for “normal” carpet is 20-24 denier. A carpet with a denier of 10-12 is considered super-soft. But there are also carpets that are even softer. Today’s manufacturing technologies have created fibers that are as small as 3-4 denier! To see what this looks like, check out Tigressa carpet on CarpetOne.com.

DOES SOFT MEAN WEAK?

Soft things don’t really have a great reputation for being strong (think kittens and bunnies) but you walk on your carpet every day so you need it to be somewhat strong, right? Have no fear. You can have both. A quality soft carpet will give you the soft touch and durability. How can this be so?

Even though the fiber filaments are super fine, there are a lot of them. The more filaments per square inch, the stronger the carpet will be. Imagine how much damage 1,000 kittens could do confined in a small space!

This Tigressa carpet can be soft and strong because the fibers are fine but also very close together.

SOFT STYLE

There must be a downside, right? All soft carpets probably look the same…boring, right? Nope! Soft carpets come in all different styles from plush and casual to textures and patterns. It’s the same fine filaments, packed tightly together. The difference is how the fibers are cut. For more about different carpet textures in the post BEAUTIFUL & DURABLE – CHOOSING A CARPET THAT WILL LAST.